Jerusalemites crowd the Old City for Shavuot

Scene at Birkat Cohanim on another holiday, Sukkot

By Judy Lash Balint

Judy Lash Balint

JERUSALEM–It’s 5:00 a.m on Shavuot morning and I’m having trouble finding an empty seat at any shul in Jerusalem’s Old City. Every synagogue is already packed as I make the mistake of lingering a few minutes too long at the Kotel amongst the tens of thousands who have made their way there after a night of learning.

The atmosphere is light, almost light-headed you could say from lack of sleep, as young and old congratulate each other for making it through the night. Only the young yeshiva boys puffing away on cigarettes spoil the atmosphere. Small groups of secular Israelis wander through the crowd. “This is amazing,” mutters one woman.

After dropping in at three shuls, I finally find a spot in the hallway of the Ramban synagogue near the Cardo.

After Hallel and the reading of the Ten Commandments, a swift Haftarah reading brings us to the Yizkor memorial prayer. Only a few women are left inside as the young girls who filled the place and have not yet lost parents file out. It’s about the same proportion down at the Kotel—it seems that at least two thirds of the masses thronging the Kotel plaza are under 30.

Coming barely a week after Jerusalem Day, when similar numbers of mostly young people fill the area to celebrate the reunification of the city, the Shavuot early morning spectacle   is another affirmation of the strength of the connection of the people to its roots.

In the blessedly cool air of the pre-dawn, it’s as if the Kotel is a giant magnet pulling in the multitudes from every direction. Flooding down Agron Street in front of the U.S Consulate building and its sleepy guards, the crowd gathers force and takes over the Mamilla area. The Tower of David and Jaffa Gate rise in front of us, outlined by spotlights.

It’s 4:40 a.m as we surge forward and down the steps of the David Street shuk only to encounter a human traffic jam as we make the turn from the Street of the Chain into the approach to the Kotel. A few groups of Arabs heading to work are walking up in the opposite direction. No one bothers them as they make their way out of the Old City through Jaffa Gate.  On the way down, I follow Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger who is surrounded by a 4-person security entourage as he walks along holding hands with his grandson.

There are only four entryways into the Kotel plaza and they’re all completely overwhelmed by the numbers of people pressing to get in.   There’s barely room to move as more and more people surge in from each of the four entry points. I head up to the stairway in front of the Aish building and take up a position at the railing just in front of the gold menorah overlooking the Kotel plaza adjacent to the last flight of steps leading down to the plaza. It’s the best place to take in the majestic transformation from night to dawn over the Temple Mount.

Within a few minutes, a thirty-something bearded man draped in a tallit approaches and asks me to move because he and his minyan are about to start davening. A young boy brings over their sefer Torah and unceremoniously places it next to me on the metal shelf that’s a diagram of the view in front of us.  Since when is this a designated davening spot? There are other women coming and going, and the men have obviously seen that I was there before they decided to set up. I tell them that they didn’t disturb me and I wouldn’t disturb them, and I left in my own good time.  Their insistence that the rest of us have to move just so they can daven wherever they want is another small example of the creeping takeover of so many of our national holy sites.

Unlike other years, when the bright sun peeks over the Mt of Olives, this morning’s sunrise is masked by clouds. The bright green lights adorning the two mosques behind the Temple Mount shine in the semi-darkness. As the sky begins to change color and turn slowly from a midnight blue to a steely grey, the garish lights vanish. Exactly at sunrise, chattering starlings swoop down, and the voices of the throng rise in prayer.

On this holiday of Shavuot that commemorates the giving of the Torah, the symbolic wedding between God and the Jewish people, most of the women are wearing white and the centuries-old Kabbalistic custom of Tikkun Leil Shavuot, a night dedicated to Torah study is observed by hundreds of thousands of Israelis. On the eve of the holiday, commentators on Israel Radio remark on the phenomenon of secular Jews eager to take part in some kind of Torah learning on Shavuot. Daily papers feature tightly packed full pages of venues where learning of all kinds is taking place all over the city. Many places are forced to turn people away for lack of space at their study sessions.

A few years ago, a May 18 2007 editorial in the American Jewish weekly newspaper, The Forward, noted, “…the proportion of Jews that turns out for the festival (Shavuot) will not be great…Shavuot simply hasn’t caught on with recent generations of Jews.” Perhaps things have changed this year, otherwise Shavuot could be another sign of the widening gap between Israel and the Diaspora.

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Judy Lash Balint is a freelance writer based in Jerusalem.  Her stories appear on her website,  Jerusalem Diaries:In Tense Times

A Shavuot celebration in the wheat fields of Kibbutz Ruhama

 

 

Kindergartner experiences a ride in a harvester

By Ulla Hadar

Ulla Hadar

KIBBUTZ RUHAMA, Israel — When my children were younger, one of their highlights in the season of Shavuot was to climb into a combine and observe from that vantage point what it’s like to harvest the fields.  For some years we have not done this, as they have grown a lot bigger.

However, this year, as the holiday approached,  my eldest daughter Anat  (26 years) invited me to join her for a visit to the fields.   My excitement was so great I concluded kindergarten is MY holiday.

Climbing Aboard

Today, Anat is a kindergarten teacher in nearby Sderot for children with special needs. She had decided to take the children for an experience that she had remembered from her childhood.  The children know me as I have visited the kindergarten and also have helped to host visits to Kibbutz Ruhama by these pupils.  They came to Ruhama for a day of challenging sport with the organization “Etgarim”(the Hebrew word for challenge).

There may be no feeling more heartwarming than hearing the children call out “Ulla-Ulla,” and coming forward to hold my hand or give me a hug.  Anyone who has this experience will feel her body refill with new energy.

In groups of two and three, the small children climbed under their teacher’s watchful eye to the cab of the combine.  Once they were safely aboard, the operator of the huge machine moved it slowly through the wheat field, enabling the pupils to know the motions and aromas of that experience. To me it seemed that the teachers were as excited as the children.

There is something quite magical to see these large machines entering the wheat fields and harvesting them in a matter of no time.  Surely, Anat’s kindergartners will remember the experience for some time.

The festivities of Shavuot (Festival of the Weeks) in Kibbutz Ruhama , one of the kibbutzim in the Sha’ar Hanegev municipality, took place in the afternoon of the sixth day of Sivan, corresponding with May 19. This holiday marks the conclusion of the counting of the Omer (Shavuot is celebrated exactly seven weeks after the second evening of Pesach) and the day the Torah was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. It is one of the shalosh regalim, the three Biblical pilgrimage festivals. As well as being called Shavuot this holiday is also known as, Hag ha-Katsir (the Day of the First Fruits) Yom ha-Bikkurim (Festival of Reaping) and Hag Matan Torah (The Gift of the Torah). The seven species are the agricultural theme of Shavuot. The products symbolize the fertility of Israel. The seven species are wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, pomegranates, olives and honey (from dates).

As always the celebrations were run by the agricultural department (Gesher – Giduli Sadot Ruhama) which is in charge of this local event.

Pipe Dance at Kibbutz Ruhama

Ori Levi as head of the kibbutz’s agriculture department oversees the planning and is active throughout the entire ceremony, together with his team of agricultural workers. Everyone is proud to show off the capabilities of the huge farm machinery utilized on the kibbutz. The ceremony includes dancing, with the agricultural workers arranging a dance with irrigation pipes;  a bicycle rondo;  a crop-dusting demonstration by a small aeroplane ; a balloon release with the wish of freeing captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from his captivity across the border in Gaza,  and off course all the agriculture machinery lining up around the big crowd .

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Hadar is Sha’ar Hanegev bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World

The greatest pianist, Part II

By David Amos

David Amos

SAN DIEGO–In my last column, I shared with you my enthusiasm and interest in the Harold Schonberg book Horowitz, His Life and His Music. Following are a few entertaining, surprising, and insightful quotes from the book which reveal the personality, friendships, and motivations of Vladimir Horowitz, who, rightfully, has been called one of the greatest pianists of all times, possibly the greatest of them all.

ON THE HOROWITZ VIRTUOSITY:
Cardus was also responsible for passing on a delightful anecdote about a Horowitz rehearsal with Sir Thomas Beecham. They were working on the Tchaikovsky for a performance to be given on November 10, 1932. At one point, Beecham stopped his players and said, “Mr. Horowitz, really, you can not play like that. It is incredible, not permissible. My orchestra can not live up to it”.

ON PRACTICING:
He claimed that he never practices very much, which may or may not have been true. Many pianists like to pretend that they never practice. (So do violinists and other jet-setter soloists). This is a form of professional machismo. But it is a fact that as a young pianist Horowitz was compulsively reading through the piano literature and opera scores instead of practicing his scales.

ON ARTISTS HAVING AN INSIGHT IN ANTICIPATING THE HORRORS OF THE THIRD REICH:
All the experts had told Horowitz that there would never be a war. Inconceivable! they said. But Horowitz said that he knew war was coming. “And so did Rachmaninoff and Friedman when I had dinner with them in Paris in 1938”. Artists have more delicate antennae than politicians, and they recognized the threat from Germany long before the Chamberlains and Lavals and industrialists from Europe.

ON A LESSON HOROWITZ GAVE TO GARY GRAFFMAN:
There was a lesson that Graffman vividly remembered. He was working on Rachmaninoff’s A Minor Prelude, a very difficult piece. Horowitz asked him to repeat a section, which Graffman did, looking at him rather than at the keyboard, “so if I had to play five notes, six of them were wrong. So as I played this complete mess there was a crash, and the photograph of Rachmaninoff on the piano fell down and the glass broke. At that time, there were many other photos on the piano, but only the Rachmaninoff fell down. Horowitz turned pale. So did I.”

ON ARTUR RUBINSTEIN AND HOROWITZ:
The basic difference between Rubinstein and Horowitz was that when Rubinstein generated love, Horowitz generated awe. In My Many Years, the second volume of his autobiography, Rubinstein has a few words to say about his relationship with Horowitz. Even before they met he admits to some jealousy, because everybody in Paris was talking about the young Horowitz. Shortly after their first meeting, Rubinstein went to a Horowitz concert and was impressed. “I shall never forget the two Paganini-Liszt Etudes, the E Flat and E Major ones. There was much more than sheer brilliance and technique; there was an easy elegance, the magic which defies description”.

ON LIFE IN PARIS IN THE 1920’S:
“Such was the artistic life in Paris in the 1920’s. What a time for the young and talented in music-or, of course, in any of the arts-to be there! Picasso and Braque and Vlaminck; Joyce and Hemmingway; Cocteau, Honegger, and Massine; Ravel and Poulenc; Rene Clair, Virgil Thomson, and Diaghilev; Dali, Chagall; the stern goddess known as Nadia Boulanger; Gertrude Stein……”

ON ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON:
“Albert Hall, which seated about seven thousand, had terrible acoustics and an echo. It was said of this hall that you could hear two concerts there for the price of one.”

ON HOROWITZ AND HIS FATHER-IN-LAW, ARTURO TOSCANINI:
Everybody who knew Toscanini and Horowitz at that time were agreed that Horowitz was overawed. Toscanini was the master, Horowitz the disciple, and the disciple would never think of contradicting the master. In any case, one did not argue with Toscanini, who always knew he was right. Horowitz was face to face with unalterable law, and he was swamped. He admitted as much. In 1975 he told John Gruen in a New York Times interview, “I had to be rather passive with him, because he needed to be the strong one. He was a very stubborn man. Even when I was not in accord about a certain interpretation, I would have to give in to him”.

ON THE QUALITY OF PIANOS:
“There is a belief among piano manufacturers, that God put pianists on earth for one reason only-to complain about pianos.”

ON DRIVING A CAR:
Horowitz never learned to drive his Rolls and had to engage a chauffeur. Driving a car was too hard for him, he said. Playing the octaves in the Tchaikovsky was much easier.

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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra and has guest conducted professional orchestras around the world.